With a compelling, twisting narrative, “A Fine Line”, an extraordinary historical fiction, presents the lives of ordinary people in the most extraordinary manner against the backdrop of great social turmoil. The characters’ lives are seen playing out first in the turbulent landscapes of Victorian Liverpool and Dundee, and then on to the devastating battlefields of the First World War. This gripping novel takes the readers into the worlds of three families struggling to survive the perils of life on the economic breadline.
Painting a vivid and constantly changing picture on a huge canvas, the author, David Gilbertson, gives an enthralling experience of courage and resilience as the central characters battle to overcome the challenges of their lives with little money and less influence. While turning each page of the novel, readers will feel a close connection between the situations that arise and the characters going through them.
At the core of the story presented in this heart-wrenching novel, “A Fine Line”, are Elizabeth and Jane, childhood friends whose lives, once they are separated by geography, take very different turns. The two women, as wives and mothers, despite much shared experience choose very different paths to keep their families together and to survive. Chronicled in parallel are the rich experiences of Elizabeth’s son David, a Black Watch infantryman; and Joseph, the orphaned son of a street prostitute who overcomes the acute deprivations of his youth to make a success of his life.
The destinies of the four are intertwined as they travel through dramatically changing circumstances together; beginning in the aftermath of the eighteenth century slave trade, progressing into the era of vast Empire expansion and the very profound changes brought on by the Industrial revolution. They live through a time of widening inequality with those holding the levers of power in Britain’s booming trade and industry soon creating prodigious wealth for themselves but leaving their workers struggling to put bread on their tables.
The world of Joseph, Elizabeth, Jane and David is one fraught with hazard in which exploitation, religious zealotry and violence lead to fraud, rape, and murder. Nevertheless, “A Fine Line” in presenting lives full of challenges and adversities, highlights the ingenuity, bravery and determination of these four remarkable central characters, their friendships, their courage and their unwavering bonds. Through these fascinating subjects, “A Fine Line” offers a beacon of hope and redemption.
David Gilbertson, with his remarkable debut novel, “A Fine Line”, invites readers to savour rich historical details along with captivating aspects of human connections, bearing ultimate witness to the inspiring strength of the human spirit.
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Characters
A Fine Line is the story of four people: Joseph Steggle, Elizabeth Simpson and her son David and Jane Garston. It charts how their three families, which begin far apart in time and place in Liverpool and Dundee, first intertwine and finally fuse together over three generations.
Their journey begins in the middle of the nineteenth century where Britain, recently hugely enriched by the era of slavery, stands at the centre of the world at the head of a global Empire. It advances through the acceleration of the Industrial Revolution before entering a tumultuous period of domestic religious and racial strife and ultimately on into the horror of global conflict with the onset of the First World War.
Theirs is a world of great inequality where those who have profited most from this unprecedented period of profound commercial and social change have amassed quite prodigious wealth, often through the ruthless exploitation of the power of money and influence. The contrast between the haves and the have nots that results is complete.
Joseph, Elizabeth and David and Jane, all ordinary working people, plot very different courses to try to protect their families and to survive on the economic cliff edge.
But their differing choices bring them finally to the same place. There they reflect together on their decisions that proved critical, the sacrifices they had to make, the principles they held to and what truly mattered most of all to them as they fought to stay on the right side of the fine line between salvation and destitution.